Saturday, 17 October 2015

Thank You, Jeeves - PG Wodehouse

This is the first of Wodehouse's novels
to feature the wonderful Jeeves, and the first that I've read,
although I have watched the Jeeves and Wooster
TV series many many times. Usually I'd say that watching an
adaptation before reading the book spoiled it for me a little, but
Steven Fry, Hugh Laurie and the mood of the production as a whole
captured the feel of the characters and the story so perfectly that I
didn't mind seeing them play it out in my head as I read.

Bertie
Wooster's new musical instrument, the banjolele, drives him by
popular complaint from his London flat to a country cottage on his
friend Chuffy's seaside estate, and also forces Jeeves to give
notice, who is promptly rehired by Chuffy himself. Bertie's peaceful
country retirement is shattered by the arrival of his beautiful,
charming and unregretted American ex-fiancée Pauline Stoker and her
disapproving father, and an amusing sequence of evasions,
misunderstandings and reconciliations follows.

Bertie's
amiable but vaguely bemused viewpoint gives humour to every scene,
for instance one in which he and Pauline are (through a completely
innocent if highly unfeasible set of circumstances) about to be
discovered alone together in his bedroom, she wearing his pyjamas,
begin to argue about the niceties of grammar rather than the problem
at hand.

Some
of the events in the novel were moved around or taken out to shorten
it a little for the adaptation, so even having seen the episode I
wasn't sure what was going to happen next. Unusually, I don't feel as
though the changes necessarily made the story worse, or better for
that matter – it was just a case of reaching the same conclusion
through slightly fewer stages. There were a few very funny scenes
which sadly weren't kept in, though. One confusing factor, given that
this is the first Jeeves novel written, was the casual references to
other characters and amusing anecdotes that I'd already seen in the
TV series but obviously hadn't in the books.

I
laughed frequently throughout the novel, and sometimes worried about
waking people up in the next room when I was reading in bed. Having
read this I'm definitely going to look out for the rest of the
series.